We’ve heard nothing from Jane Fonda
Oh come on. The brush Toby Young paints with is so broad that he’s lost his grip.
No other prominent feminist has spoken out about Ashtiani’s case, unless you include Yoko Ono who has signed the petition calling for her to be freed. We’ve heard nothing from Germaine Greer, nothing from Gloria Steinem, nothing from Jane Fonda, nothing from Naomi Wolf, nothing from Clare Short, nothing from Harriet Harmen.
Well that’s interesting, and in some cases reprehensible if true, but it’s hardly conclusive. That’s not a complete list of prominent feminists, to put it mildly; arguably it’s not even a list of feminists. Jane Fonda? Yoko Ono? They’re celebrities rather than feminists.
Almost no one on the left, with the honourable exception of Christopher Hitchens, dares to breath a word against any Islamic country for fear of being branded “Islamophobic”. Thus, a brutal dictatorship is able to torture and murder thousands of innocent women, safe in the knowledge that the self-styled keepers of the West’s conscience will remain silent.
Oh come on. Yes parts of the left are way too “sensitive” about what they take to be “Islamophobia” and way too confused about the difference between racism and criticism of religion, but it’s certainly not the case that Christopher Hitchens is the sole exception to that.
Could a feminist outcry today about the plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani do anything to prevent her death? We will never know, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that their continuing silence reveals the moral bankruptcy of their movement.
What do you mean we will never know?! There is such an outcry; it’s going on right now. There could be even more people involved, of course, but that doesn’t mean there are none.
Yeah, it’s the bizarrely “broad brush” that ruins the piece. I agree with the basic point — that there are elements on the left who mistakenly think that liberalism entails an unbending tolerance for other beliefs that extends even to the condoning of shockingly illiberal behavior — but the idea that there is no outcry from the left over this case is just bizarre.
Well, I for one am not going to be tolerant of hateful intolerance.
I created a Facebook page opposing the fact that in Saudi Arabia all adult women are required to get permission from a male guardian to do many things; for example to travel, study, work or even go to court to make a complaint about domestic violence. It would be great if you all would go over and click the Like button to spread the word. The page is called “Women Don’t Need Guardians” and here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Women-Dont-Need-Guardians/138248439539086?ref=ts
Is Fonda even still leftwing?
So, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are not “on the left” any more? Or maybe Blair never supported the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Broad brush, indeed.
Why has Young not mentioned child witch hunting in Uganda? His silence on the Uzbek dictatorship is curious. When will he condemn Viktor Bout and international arms dealers? Where’s his solidarity for worldwide trypophobics?
Come on, BenSix, with all the demonstrating, leafletting and lobbying Toby Young is no doubt doing on behalf of Ashtiani, how would he get time for that?
Huh? I was sure that Jane Fonda died recently, making this demand quite odd to put it mildly.
But it would seem that I’ve been misinformed.
As someone who is probably a lot older than you Ophelia, I tend to agree with Hitchens assessment. I’ve spent years listening to feminists lambast ( and rightly so) the oppression of women in other religious traditions, particularly Christainity, and so when the often extreme misogyny of mainstream Islam became exposed, I was appalled and shocked by their degree of silence.
If fear, including the fear of being labelled “islamophobe”, isn’t the source of this lack of resolve, then what is, exactly?
Shifter, I bet you’re not a lot older than I am – hardly anyone is. I’m a boomer. This isn’t Hitchens’s assessment, it’s Toby Young’s. I don’t disagree with the claim that some feminists are reprehensibly silent on the subject of misogyny in Islam and the like, I just disagree with the claim that all Western feminists are.
There is a lot of discussion and reportage at B&W on apologetics for Islamism and hand-waving excuses for FGM and so on, but I try to keep it accurate. Some of the left is stupid enough to think that Islam (and even Islamism) is somehow progressive, but by no means all of it.
Irene: no, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are not on the left. Not at all.
Of course, the right’s “solution” is “bomb them, we’ll be greeted as liberators!”
Add the fact that conservatives are hellbent on keeping women as second class citizens in my own country and you’ll understand why I don’t take their claims too seriously.
Before 9/11 I used to occasionally get email asking me to sign petitions condemning the Afghan Taliban for its mistreatment of women. I never did, not because I approved of the Taliban, but because I knew that the Taliban neither knew nor cared about these petitions, and that the petitions themselves were a meaningless exercise in self-congratulation on the part of the signers.
In this country none of the leading lights of the authoritarian right (think Limbaugh or Beck or Palin) are going to heed any chiding they receive from Jane Fonda or Gloria Steinem (in fact they’ll welcome it as a validation of their all-important ability to piss off liberals). Why does anybody think the House of Saud is going to pay any more attention to them?
Because they do, for one thing.
Also, international support means something (a lot, in fact) to the people being victimized.
Really, I think it’s a little precious – and perhaps even self-congratulatory – to refuse to sign such petitions because you think they’re self-congratulatory. So what if they are?! Is that really what matters?
I think what would matter would be to do something tangible to change the problem, which the people circulating the petition weren’t in a position to do. Signing irrelevant petitions is a way of pretending to do something when you actually aren’t. It’s an act that I find self-deceiving and sad. Nor did I grandly “refuse” to sign; I just sighed and trashed the email. I’m not much for meaningless gestures.
I’d tend to agree with Young’s premise. The only feminism I hear about nowdays in the U.S. is the sort of po-mo dithering my daughter just got in her college freshman “Gender Studies” course, the POV of which was highly culturally relativistic.
Also, it strikes me that your post, Ophelia, is full of protestation without offering a single example of a feminist outcry on the subject in question. Perhaps the problem is that now the outcry occurs on like-thinking blogs, which don’t penetrate the mass media to much if any extent.
That said, on the subject of feminists speaking out about Islamist misogyny, the obvious voice that comes to mind is–Ophelia Benson.
Regarding the assertion of the article in question, Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes much the same point in her newest book, Nomad. (Speaking of which, I can’t wait to get OB’s, & others’, thoughts on her rather astounding suggestion in Chapter 16…)
Phyllis Chesler talks much about Islamist misogyny: http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2010/07/28/marital-rape-a-crime-in-america/
Melissa McEwan spoke out: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/07/action-item-save-sakineh-mohammadi.html
The National Organization for Women deals with American national cases, not this sort of thing.
The Feminist Majority Foundation helps Afghan women: http://feminist.org/afghan/index.asp